[h2]Now open source![/h2]
Thank you to all of you who offered your services, and thank you to You Are A Tiger, for offering 25% of your commissions to this project. Unfortunately, this project will never be finished. Sorry!

What is it?
standardArt is a project I've been working on. In short, it's a clone of deviantArt, the website loved by millions and despised by those with common sense. It aims to be better than deviantArt, by not being a total shit filled hole of bad art.

Where can I get it?
As of now, you can't. Currently, it's in development. Once I finish it, or at least get it to a usable state, I'll hopefully be able to put it on a web server for you all to use. Never will be finished.

How much will premium be?
There's no premium! That doesn't mean there won't be those features, though. Since I'm doing this as a project for fun, and not as a living, I'm planning on a donation supported cost covering model. But there won't be any of the limitations of free users.

How will it be better than deviantArt?
The first method will be to have a newgrounds-like submission system. When an image is uploaded, it goes into a period of judgement. When the art has gathered enough ratings, and the rating is high enough, then it will be accepted. There will also be categories, not just for "Traditional Art" and "Digital Art", but also for MLP art, Homestuck, those stupid Q/A things, etc. And you'll be able to filter them out, just in case you really fucking hate MLP. There's also going to be better moderation.

When can we expect it done?
Never

Screenshots?
You bet!
The homepage, as of 1/27/2012
Avatars & Part of the profile!
Dropdown menus are the shit.
Registration & cool slide up alert boxes
Lightbox!

Would it be possible for artwork to be sorted by having it tagged with the content it contains? You know, like "MLP, Homestuck, cows, cat food commercial scripts, fanworks in general,etc."?

Was that already in your plans?

I was hoping on it. Probably something like the way kongregate handles tags, where users vote on tags instead of having people not add them to correct works (they'd still be addable by the author, of course).

I was hoping on it. Probably something like the way kongregate handles tags, where users vote on tags instead of having people not add them to correct works (they'd still be addable by the author, of course).

Okay.

I was curious, because I had been thinking about it on the way to school.

Is a critique function possible? For the purpose of following critiques that artists we're interested in knowing what they know submit, so that we can all learn from stuff that they submit? Gives more of a reason and method for us to help each-other improve.

It'd be free though, not like DA. Otherwise not really worth having really.

Is a critique function possible? For the purpose of following critiques that artists we're interested in knowing what they know submit, so that we can all learn from stuff that they submit? Gives more of a reason and method for us to help each-other improve.

It'd be free though, not like DA. Otherwise not really worth having really.

You can't judge an entire community based on the amount of 12 year old pony-fags who can't draw. People use DA to connect with other artists, get commission opportunities, and basically grow as an artist. That's what I use it for.
Just like anything else, from music to tv shows, you have to sift through some shit. But the spirit of the site isn't in those that give it a bad name.

I don't want to seem butthurt, but to say that those who enjoy deviantart lack common sense is incredibly narrow and more than a little bit insulting.

You can't judge an entire community based on the amount of 12 year old pony-fags who can't draw. People use DA to connect with other artists, get commission opportunities, and basically grow as an artist. That's what I use it for.
Just like anything else, from music to tv shows, you have to sift through some shit. But the spirit of the site isn't in those that give it a bad name.

I don't want to seem butthurt, but to say that those who enjoy deviantart lack common sense is incredibly narrow and more than a little bit insulting.

I think he was just extrapolating exaggerating there, we all know that DA has some amazing artists. It's just that the popularity is genuinely skewed towards anything cute or having to do with a meme. There are very few very good artists on DA who are widely recognized. I'm assuming what's trying to be done here is create a website that not only creates more quality critiques and inspires improvement but also pays more attention to art instead of making it a place to go and submit pictures of gmod screenshots or screenshots from a TV show you're watching on your computer edited in paint.

Yes, there are some amazing artists, and I follow plenty of them. But the percentage of people who actually care about doing well in art vs. people who don't care at all and just want more followers and popularity and will do whatever it takes are definitely much less than 50%

You can't judge an entire community based on the amount of 12 year old pony-fags who can't draw. People use DA to connect with other artists, get commission opportunities, and basically grow as an artist. That's what I use it for.
Just like anything else, from music to tv shows, you have to sift through some shit. But the spirit of the site isn't in those that give it a bad name.

I don't want to seem butthurt, but to say that those who enjoy deviantart lack common sense is incredibly narrow and more than a little bit insulting.

you really have to look deep into deviantART if you wanna find great artists. it's like digging through a sea of shit to find gold.

one question - why would the people you want to attract to your site (ie, good artists who currently have their work on deviantart), want to come to your site when you call them idiots for using a successful competitor?

What's the point of this site really? I mean it seems like it just is a place that forces the community to post "acceptable" art of some standards that is unknown, where does the line to bad art go? who's gonna decide that?

Also if you guys want to see good art from an online community, why don't go to conceptart? they have made a natural community of talented artists without forcing it on them.

What's the point of this site really? I mean it seems like it just is a place that forces the community to post "acceptable" art of some standards that is unknown, where does the line to bad art go? who's gonna decide that?

Also if you guys want to see good art from an online community, why don't go to conceptart? they have made a natural community of talented artists without forcing it on them.

I've been wondering about that "Acceptable Art" thing too, because the level of acceptable is kind of different for everyone and you can't have mods being art nazis and saying "THIS ISN'T REAL ART". I think that if there are art filters and more specific sections it'll definitely help people not see what they don't want to regardless, so I don't know if you'd need to moderate "acceptable" so much.

They should probably limit certain things like screenshots of videogames where no custom content or changes have been made (I've seen some paintovers, custom mod screenshots, etc., that have looked stunning.), or specific things.

Concept Art has a higher standard of art, but it's so much so that it actually intimidates a bunch of people who don't feel they should post until they're "good enough" to post at CA. I know a few years ago I was terrified to post anything. I ended up doing it, but only one person responded with any criticism. Which is better than nothing, but they just said "Work on anatomy and just keep practicing." The girl was really nice and she was really good at art herself, but she didn't really suggest much. And I never really got any good critiques out of it. When you post at CA normally you get replies if you're really good or have popularity, and people with popularity definitely swing things like pointing out they like certain things in a contest. You see certain pieces win by a landslide when you're pretty sure that other people have done better.

It's not that the community isn't amazing for improvement (It's phenomenal), it's just you have to work really really hard if you aren't amazing to get critiques and stuff. I see plenty of Sketchbooks on there that get no replies and people just keep posting their work over and over again trying to get some. I think that with SA (like you mentioned, I think that the name sounds a bit snobby, could probably go for a change and definately shouldn't use deviantArt's first word lowercase-combined-with-word-in-uppercase-with-no-spaces thing.) more of a "give critiques and try your best to help people improve" attitude will hopefully be established. Those're my hopes for it anyway.

CA kind of feels, sometimes, like the elite colleges of the world. You can go there and learn a ton, and from the best, but unless you offer something where they see a lot of potential or you're well known you probably aren't going to "get in", so to speak.

Quality art is relative to what type of art you enjoy. But I think we can all agree there's a bottom line where things are crap.

There's also artist that are progressing with their technique and might not be too good just yet. That's where constructive critique comes in, but in DA the community is so self-important, so butthurt, a lot of them think they are so great they won't take criticism and no one is willing to give it most of the time.

I want a site where people can share "decent" art and share opinions. Also a site where people are not so stupidly paranoid about copyright that they go so far as to ruin their piece by adding an awful watermark to it.

The first step should be changing the name. Making reference to DA can't be good.

Everybody is bad at art at some point, my first drawings were awful, but if I was getting Constructive Criticism and help since I started drawing in 5th grade, even though I only drew sporadically, I would have been far past where I'm at now.

The bottom one isn't bad, and MS paint art can definitely be good, it's just that person needs to learn a method and keep working and probably needs some CC that isn't mean because they're probably young. As for the picture, so long as they're having that as a deviantID that really isn't terrible, I don't see why people hate on the "myspace picture" thing so much besides that it's overused and often used by people that they don't particularly like.

If it's for a portrait then they need CC, but that kind of stuff wouldn't have flown in ConceptArt, and on DA people don't give much CC, which is why I think an in-between site may be what people need at this point.

I think it's more for people who may be looking for a different environment than CA or DA. No site's environment is right for everybody to learn their best in.

I still go on CA and DA, personally. But I'd be interested in how this site goes, I'm definitely willing to at least give it a shot.

Edited:

Everybody is bad at art at some point, my first drawings were awful, but if I was getting Constructive Criticism and help since I started drawing in 5th grade, even though I only drew sporadically, I would have been far past where I'm at now.

The bottom one isn't bad, and MS paint art can definitely be good, it's just that person needs to learn a method and keep working and probably needs some CC that isn't mean because they're probably young. As for the picture, so long as they're having that as a deviantID that really isn't terrible, I don't see why people hate on the "myspace picture" thing so much besides that it's overused and often used by people that they don't particularly like.

If it's for a portrait then they need CC, but that kind of stuff wouldn't have flown in ConceptArt, and on DA people don't give much CC, which is why I think an in-between site may be what people need at this point.

I know that, my early designs were awful too, but everyone improves. The point of the site would be filtering the not so skilled art (still can be uploaded, just not highly exposed to everyone else) and having a less dumb community that can't take CC. Also avoiding obnoxious things like MySpace filter raped self pics that can hardly be called art and also awful circle jerks like fursonas and "My OC character".